Mia
(For holderoftheheart)

I have a confession to make...

We only spent six months together. I mean, together together. We'd known each other much longer and flirted for, oh, who knows how much of that time. Nearly all of it, I guess. He proposed to me before it happened, you know. I said yes. How could I have said anything else? I loved him so much, I couldn't think for a second that would ever change. I still do, and when he joins me I'll be waiting for him with open arms.

I'm good at waiting for him. I waited for him for years, after all, waiting on him to open his eyes, to come back to me. A lawyer is someone who can't cry 'til it's all over, Mia. And it wasn't over. She'd put a stop to it, to us, to him, but it wasn't over. No, I was twenty-four years old and my fiancè was lying with white hair in a hospital bed, but they promised me he'd wake up soon. He promised me he wouldn't die because of her. And I loved him, I loved him so much, and I trusted him. And so I waited.

The days seemed to melt into each other. Years and years past, but I don't think there was a period of more than maybe two days that I didn't visit his hospital bed. I chatted to him, I bought him presents, and I wrote to him so that he could read what I'd been thinking when he woke up. AndI had to get on with my life. It was...difficult. My mentor was gone - for now - and life at Grossberg's was awkward to say the least. They were both so...I don't know how to explain it. They didn't seem to know how to talk to me anymore. Sidelong glances, half-formed sentences, loud coughing and quick excuses to finish conversations. I didn't mind. I felt so listless that I couldn't even comprehend what was going on. I began to wake up eventually of course: I had to. It was during a visit, and I was halfway through my normal routine, speaking to him and writing to him, when the nurses told me about his vision. Blind. I remember the fury flashing up inside me then. Blind! She'd stolen his vision. My sadness didn't disappear, no, it changed. It became an obsession, perhaps not a healthy one, eclipsing even the obsession with clearing my mother's name. I would get her. For Valerie. For Terry. For Diego. Especially for Diego. And I don't know why, but it happened in my head without my consent - I became half-convinced that when I did, they would give me my Diego back. Until then, I'd have to try to get through without him. Someone who can't cry 'til it's all over, Mia.

And then she made the mistake. She killed Doug Swallow, and blamed Phoenix Wright...who came to us for help. We got her, I got her, and I rushed to the hospital immediately after saying goodbye to my client, excited, jubilant, burst into his hospital wing and-he was still there. Still lying there, unconscious, for all intents and purposes dead to the world. I spent a long time at the hospital that day, staring at his face, unblinking, unable to comprehend why he wasn't back with me now, now that I'd beaten her. Then I went back to the office. I'm not proud of what happened there, and I don't remember much of it, but I remember being so, so angry, screaming, shouting...it ended in Mr Grossberg restraining me I remember, and smashed things and broken mess all over the office. "Mia," he tried to soothe me, sounding anxious and concerned about me at the same time, "Mia, it's okay. It's okay to cry."

"No it's not!" I remember screaming at him. Poor Mr Grossberg. I apologised later, the next week, and paid for the damages, but I knew I wouldn't ever set foot in that office as an employee again. He wouldn't have minded, but I couldn't do it. And so the Fey and Co Law Offices were born. I became obsessed again, this time with vindicating my mother, more so than before. Diego had been helping me with that, and maybe, maybe if I could just do this...maybe then he'd come back to me. Can't cry 'til it's all over, Mia.

And so I hired Phoenix and the Fey and Co Law offices made a name for themselves. I became extremely close to him, like a younger brother, and many times I nearly shared my secret with him - both my secrets, about Diego and about my mother. But no, I somehow couldn't. I needed to keep them... separate, somehow. I didn't want to, for lack of a better word, jinx anything. And I got it all. All the information to catch THAT man. To get my mother's revenge. And just as I was closing in...It's all over, Mia.

I wasn't gone. I came back a few times, to help Phoenix out, because I wasn't ready to leave. I wasn't ready to leave my sister, my closest friend...and Diego. I couldn't leave him, not without knowing. I'd spent one lifetime waiting for him, and I didn't want to wait another. And then Phoenix met Godot. Iris' trial was eye-opening - my little cousin, Iris Hawthorne, how could I not have known her, how could I not have recognised who that evil woman truly was, Dahlia Hawthorne, the little Fey twins, Aunt Morgan's daughters. Perhaps if I had recognised her then, no one would needed to die. Perhaps Diego and I would have never been parted. Perhaps. Or perhaps not. But Phoenix...oh Phoenix, I will be eternally grateful and over again to him for what he's done for me and for my family, over and over again. When it was over, the trial, when Dahlia was gone, I said goodbye to him. I knew it was time to move on. Finally, finally, it was over. And with a twinge of sadness I bid him farewell and left, intending to keep an eye on him as well as I could. Over, Mia.

And then he helped me again. Him and Miles Edgeworth, a man I would have never expected it from. Perhaps it was his way of making it up to me, from so many years ago, or perhaps he just knows what it feels like to lose what you love. Phoenix, and Edgeworth, and Maya. They brought me to her. And she brought him to me. They gave me my goodbye. "I'm sorry, Diego," I told him silently from across the jail's interview table. "I'm sorry."

"Me too, Kitten," he told me. Mia.

...I let myself cry.

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